Silence Of The Grave On Lone Star Road

Left: Cher Vang grips her face in grief Monday at the crash site where her mother, Khou Vang, was killed when a bus overturned. Cher Vang's father was thrown clear and injured in the crash and said he lost track of his wife. Family members combed nearby fields and checked hospitals before authorities confirmed Khou Vang's death.
Bryan Patrick / bpatrick@sacbee.com



The rural casinos of California are heavily-dependent on the bus traffic that brings mostly Asian immigrants to the tables and slot machines. This accident is a real blow to that traffic.

Many condolences to the families of the injured and dead:

It was a recipe for disaster.

A 52-year-old man with a sketchy driving record piloting a bus for the very first time, possibly under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

A cargo of 41 passengers in a bus with no seat belts.

A shortcut down a narrow two-lane road that would have saved two miles of driving.

All of these things came together at 6:10 p.m. Sunday outside the Colusa County city of Williams, when Quintin J. Watts apparently fell asleep at the wheel, rolled the casino-bound bus he was driving and crashed, killing eight people and injuring 35.

Among the dead was the bus company's owner, 68-year-old Daniel Cobb, Watts' stepfather and the man who hired him last week as a favor.

Among the injured was Watts, a down-on-his-luck former truck driver and parolee who was upgraded from critical to fair condition Monday at Woodland Memorial Hospital and under arrest on a charge of driving under the influence.

Survivors of the crash told harrowing stories Monday of seeing Watts fall asleep as the bus swerved back and forth, and of Cobb making a futile effort to stop the crash.

"The driver was falling asleep, and he was trying to wake the driver up," said Liw Saechao, Cobb's business partner and the mother of his 8-year-old daughter. "Daniel grabbed the wheel and tried to put the bus brake on, and it was too late – it was already flipping.

"They said Daniel flew out of the bus and into the ditch."

Many of the passengers on the bus were regular patrons of Cobb's bus service, and several called Saechao after the crash to recount the last moments before the bus rolled over.

Saechao's son, Khae, said of Watts: "This was his first actual bus trip."